Network of ‘Super PACs’ Says That It Has Raised $31 Million for Ted Cruz Bid

A network of new “super PACs” said Wednesday that it had raised $31 million to support Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, a sum that could upend expectations in the race for the Republican nomination and rewrite the political rule book for outside spending.

The groups, four super PACs sharing variations of the name Keep the Promise, were established and secured commitments with virtually no warning over the course of several days beginning Monday.

Dathan Voelter, an Austin, Tex., lawyer and friend of Mr. Cruz who is serving as treasurer for three of the super PACs, said the four organizations would operate in tandem, all seeking to help elect the Texas senator as president. Most of the contributions have already arrived, he said, and the remainder will be collected by the four groups by the end of the week.

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Senator Ted Cruz and his wife, Heidi, before he spoke at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, last week.CreditLane Hickenbottom/Reuters

The dollar figures could not be independently verified, and none of the groups will need to file campaign disclosures with the Federal Election Commission until July. But an outside spending campaign of that size, combined with Mr. Cruz’s demonstrated ability to pull in dollars from small donors, would substantially offset Mr. Cruz’s difficulties in building a traditional network of regular large donors and volunteer fund-raisers, known as bundlers.

The size of the contributions is likely to force backers of other candidates to rethink their budgets for the primary season; other super PACs lining up behind Republican candidates had planned to raise $20 million to $30 million over the course of the entire primary campaign.

“It’s unbelievable; I don’t think anyone expected it,” said Dave Carney, a Republican strategist who worked on the 2012 presidential campaign of former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. “I don’t think in the first round anyone would have expected them to raise that much. It is going to change everyone’s calculation.”

The money would also allow Mr. Cruz, whose legislative brinkmanship in the Senate has both enthralled the conservative grass roots and alienated the party’s establishment, to compete financially with establishment-backed candidates like Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor.

“There was this group of major donors who were really energized at the prospect of Senator Cruz running for president,” Mr. Voelter said in an interview. “And with the campaign they’ve seen, they wanted to form this PAC and do it early to advocate on his behalf. This has all come together very recently.”

The groups’ unusual structure also hints at the determination of wealthy donors to exert more control of the super PACs and political nonprofit organizations they have long bankrolled. Mr. Voelter said the multiple super PACs would allow donors to decide which types of activities, such as television advertising or grass-roots turnout, they wanted to fund, while exerting more control over how the groups spend money.

“It gives certain of our donors a higher degree of control over the expenditures of our funds, which they might not have with the traditional single-PAC approach,” Mr. Voelter said.

Details of the new groups’ fund-raising were first reported by Bloomberg Politics.

Mr. Voelter declined to name any of the contributors or describe who had legal control over the new groups. But the first of the new super PACs, called Keep the Promise I, filed paperwork indicating it was based in Port Jefferson Station, N.Y., with an accountant named Jacquelyn James serving as treasurer.

According to publicly available tax returns, Ms. James and her firm, Golub, LaCapra, Wilson & DeTiberiis, are also the accountants of record for a family foundation set up by Robert Mercer, a Long Island billionaire.

A spokesman for Mr. Mercer, an intensely private hedge fund investor who almost never grants interviews, declined to comment. National Review reported Wednesday that the Mercer family would control one of the new super PACs.

Mr. Mercer’s apparent blessing gives Mr. Cruz the support of one of the most significant conservative donors in the country. His wealth and reach into Republican and conservative causes put him nearly on a par with better-known donors like Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, who provided $20 million to a super PAC in 2012 that helped transform Newt Gingrich into a credible contender for the Republican nomination.

Since 2012, Mr. Mercer and his family have contributed more than $15 million to Republican candidates and super PACs, according to F.E.C. data. That includes sizable contributions to a super PAC backing Mitt Romney in 2012, as well as a group, Freedom Partners Action Fund, controlled by the political operation of the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch.

Mr. Mercer has also financed organizations dedicated to confronting the Republican mainstream and promoting more conservative candidates and ideas. He is a top donor to the Club for Growth, which raises money to back right-leaning challengers to more moderate Republicans, and his family foundation has donated to the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian foundation and legal watchdog based in Phoenix.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Network of ‘Super PACs’ Says That It Has Raised $31 Million for Cruz Effort. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe